


a shot in the dark

by goukyorin (sashimisusie)



Category: The Order: 1886
Genre: Game Spoilers, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, a little bit of headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashimisusie/pseuds/goukyorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They stand at the precipice of change and Grayson has chosen to jump when most would have turned back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a shot in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> _Why did you spare Grayson, instead of killing him?_

He  _must_  have gone this way.

The very thought is ludicrous but the Marquis can feel the certainly of it, decades of honed tactical intuition and a keen camaraderie guiding what his instincts tell him is too wild to possibly be true. Is it not the case that whatever remains, when all evidence has been considered, when the fractured pieces that once circled their bond fall at his feet, must be the truth? The man—his friend, his brother in arms and loyalty—has a plan of sorts turning gears and cogs in his mind, and though Lafayette can do little but follow his duty to the letter, he would see it through.

There is so much that has remained unsaid, and so much that has yet to see the light of the sun that sinks bloodshot into the River Thames. He needs answers and  _he_  needs to speak what he has paid so dearly to keep buried from the Order, but this is not the time nor the place to cleave unto each other the things they have kept under darkness from each other.

Recoil and retort, he keeps his arm steady as the graven statues that adorn the halls. The shot goes not wild but inaccurate enough to send a message. It is  _Sir Perceval_  who holds the gun to uphold the blood-bound oath of duty that all Knights have sworn, but it is  _Lafayette_ who speaks. 

“ Give yourself up,  _monsieur_. My next shot will not be a warning. ”

The point has been made. Grayson does not linger, sparing him a single glance over his shoulder before he crashes through brass-shot doors not built to hold back one so intent on fleeing. The guards that he’d sent to cordon off the other hall return, bootheels clicking sharply against the tiles. There is nowhere left to run on the battlements, and Lafayette does not need to focus to hear the clamour that will no doubt bring the other Knights running.

They stand at the precipice of change with only the gaping maw of the abyss below them. Against all forseeable odds, Grayson has chosen with impassioned breath, when once he would have cautioned patience and curbed passion, to jump when most would have turned back. Only time—bought by a bullet, paid for dearly with months of deprivation—and God’s will can tell if the purest of heart among them will sink or  _fly_.

There are demands. Questions, prefaced with fingers prodded into his chest as if to wound him, and answers demanded. He weathers the storm with the good humour expected of the genial Frenchman, providing just enough to deflect suspicion but never enough to incriminate past circumstantial evidence. Did he spare the man, the Lord Chancellor demands and Lafayette only shrugs, nonchalance layered over the spark of rebellion that so endeared him to not one but two revolutions.

“ It was dark. I missed.  _C’est dommage, mais c’est la vie_. Should I have need to draw on him again, you have my assurance that he will not be so lucky. ”

**Author's Note:**

> Translation: C’est dommage, mais c’est la vie. ==> It's a shame, but that's life.  
> I do apologize in advance to native French speakers for my grade 9 level of Canadian French.


End file.
